[Unstagram] The Valley Where Time Once Passed

In the corners of the world where work has taken me, I often witness countless kinds and forms of time. This was also true when I saw the numerous Bronze Age petroglyphs filling the gently rising mountain valleys amidst the vast plains of Tamgalry, Kazakhstan. In the valley, the sunlight of today was shining down on traces from thousands of years ago, striking the rocks as if to emphasize their presence. Artifacts are not merely objects containing traces of the past. They are vessels of time that carry the breath and energy of the past that has crossed those years. Looking up, the gentle straight and curved lines of the low mountain ridge above spoke of a concrete present, while also indicating that the past is firmly connected to the present. Wild animals with bodies of cows, goats, and large mountain sheep, long tusks and horns resembling ivory, dancing people, and a priest with the face of the sun (according to interpretations that see the drawings as ritualistic) spoke of a world where humans and nature had a complete relationship. What approached me with awe was the immense weight of time in between, the deep and dark valley that was a concrete abyss between here and there. Time had stopped.

The rock was a message from the past, and the ridge was the present backdrop. Tamgaly, Kazakhstan, 2017 ⓒHuh Younghan

When I placed my hand on the rock heated under the blazing sun, not only my palm but even my face became hot. My right hand held a camera, and my left hand wished for an illusion as if it were touching the time when the drawings were carved into the rock?how dramatic that would have been. But the rock was simply hot, and in the past, one could not have kept their hand on it for long. The scorching sun welcomed me too fervently to recall the hollow words clinging to the theme of time?skepticism, futility, and absence. Far away, ancestors who lived in that valley during the Middle Bronze Age 5,000 years ago chiseled pictures onto the flat surfaces of rocks. On hundreds and thousands of rocks scattered across the hilly slopes and valleys, images of livestock, people, beasts, the sun, and birds were lined up. While drawing, did they consciously think that even after everyone had left, people would be born and live in the distant future to witness their 'now' carved into the rock, and to commemorate that they once lived here? Recording and leaving visible things means being aware of time, knowing there is a future, and being conscious of distant future others as recipients of the message. They would not have drawn deer, cows, and dancing people on the rock just to relieve the surplus of ego left over or unbearable by time. They must have known that they lived here now and that someday they would disappear, and needed something to convey this moment to someone far away on their behalf. They must have understood the meaning of leaving the present behind. Or, as a religious or ritual act, they might have carved pictures on the rock as a means to pray for future blessings by recording the livestock they raised, the beasts they hunted, and their way of life (including birth and dancing, almost everything in life). Whatever the reason, they knew time. Next to the hot rock under the August sun, I was momentarily choked up.

Deer of the Bronze Age

The sense of time must mean knowing the principle that the world is connected by finite beings, but that sense also includes acknowledging and accepting the sorrow that the body beyond the senses can barely cross a lifetime. So they might have left the rock drawings as stories to send across the valley of time, like leaving behind a double. Even if their intention was only to seek blessings or to impress in the present world, the legacy has crossed a considerable span of time in human history.

To me, they are both the past and the present. I witness their present only within the present. Thousands of years, compared to cosmic time, is such a modest time that it barely takes a step. Yet, within that modest time, what has disappeared has vanished forever, and what remains stays right here in my hand. Time selectively preserves their present and transmits it to the future. Touching the vanished along with what remains is also a matter of sensation. It is to look at things that cannot be reached by touch with non-material senses.

When I considered the top of my head as twelve o’clock, the sun was shooting its light bullets at the center of the clock from two o’clock. Looking down at the rock from the eight o’clock direction, the contrast emphasized by two o’clock highlighted the outlines of the drawings. I moved my body back and forth, twisting and turning, holding the camera between six and nine o’clock to find the angle where the drawings became clear and took pictures. Sweat poured down, my crown was hot, and the sunlight reflected off the flat, carved rock returned the heat straight back to the sky. It was hot above and below. At the end of the distant past, only the blazing sun was the present. The outline of the mountain ridge, descending obliquely and then rising at a slightly steeper angle, was historical if anything. Boris, an archaeologist from this country who accompanied me, explained in front of one drawing that it depicted a childbirth scene. Childbirth in primitive drawings was poignant, solemn, and raw. If I had seen it without hearing the explanation of 'childbirth,' I would have needed to look at it for a long time and fill the unreadable blank spaces and outlines with imagination. Later researchers only gave it a name, but that name became a great bridge across the gap of years.

A painting that the accompanying archaeologist Boris said depicts a childbirth scene

People and livestock all left, and only the rock slabs with drawings and the mountains and rivers remained, silently watching the flowing time, quietly ignored by the years for hundreds or thousands of years. I even thought about what the day was like when the last person or family left after everyone who lived there had gone. Did they pack their belongings, load them on the backs of livestock, and leave like moving house, leading their families? Did they leave because there was no food? Were they chased away by something urgent? Or did they just quietly meet their end right there? Thinking about this, I descended the valley filled only with grass, trees, and rocks. Far away, halfway up a slanting hill on the steppe, several large and small brown horses without reins or saddles were grazing on dry grass, their manes fluttering in the wind.

The current horses were grazing on the grasslands, no different from those in the Bronze Age.

The horses’ tails fluttering in the wind were a signpost returning me to the present. The sense of flowing time returned again. Suddenly, the distant hill looked like a sea. The slope of the hill looked like waves. From the valley behind me, the waves of time flowed and rippled toward the sea, and the drawings on the rocks seemed to be drifting downstream again on a raft called now.

Editor's NoteThis piece writes about photographs and visible things, the relationship between past time and humans. ‘Unstagram’ is a coined term meaning photographic (gram) stories that are not instant (insta~) but rather un-instant.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.